Theatre and Feeling

by Anne Bogart, Erin Hurley (Contributor)

How does a tragedy arouse pity and fear? How do music and lighting set a mood or convey an emotional tone for an audience? Why does theatre move us?

Theatre and Feeling explores the idea that, for many people, theatre is a passion. It provides an intellectual framework for the range of emotional experience engendered by the theatre, establishing a base-line for further thinking and practice in this rich and emergent area of inquiry. Moving across western dramatic theory and theatre history, the book demonstrates the centrality of feeling to the theatre.

Genres: Theatre, Nonfiction

96 pages, Paperback

First published June 30, 2010

About the author

Anne Bogart is the Artistic Director of SITI Company, which she founded with Japanese director Tadashi Suzuki in 1992. She is a Professor at Columbia University where she runs the Graduate Directing Program. Works with SITI include Café Variations, Trojan Women, American Document, Antigone, Under Construction, Freshwater, Who Do You Think You Are, Radio Macbeth, Hotel Cassiopeia, Death and the Ploughman, La Dispute, Score, bobrauschenbergamerica, Room, War of the Worlds, Cabin Pressure, War of the Worlds: The Radio Play, Alice’s Adventures, Culture of Desire, Bob, Going, Going, Gone, Small Lives/Big Dreams, The Medium, Noel Coward’s Hay Fever and Private Lives, August Strindberg’s Miss Julie, and Charles Mee’s Orestes. She is the author of four books: A Director Prepares, The Viewpoints Book, And Then, You Act and Conversations with Anne.

Reviews

[Laura Rossiter · Rating 4 out of 5]

So good. Took me longer than I expected for such a short book but it ended up being quite scientific at times and I didn’t want to rush this read. Super interesting, stimulating, and exciting to read for theatre lovers and feeling individuals (me hihi)

[Maria · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book reads like someone's thesis statement. On the plus side it incorporates some cognitive behavioral info that is interesting and it was published pretty recently so it feels current. There is also some discussion of our hierarchical attitudes to feelings, where some are considered better or more noble than others, which then leads to a hierarchy of white over nonwhite, male over female, high culture over low culture based on which emotions are displayed and how they are displayed.

However, the text wanders and does not ultimately present a clear through line. Furthermore, the father into it I got, the more assertions seemed to be made with less grounding. All in all, I think this is a passable source for an intro into some of the existing theories and their predecessors and does give some interesting ideas to ponder but it was not a particularly breezy read even at 77 pages.

[Grace · Rating 3 out of 5]

Helpful insights on feeling’s relationship with acting and theatre throughout Western theatrical history. Hurley notes the tension between affect and intellect, mind and body, profit and pleasure, and popular/‘low’ and fine/‘high’ art, in context of the theatre, especially on the question of art’s role to edify and entertain. Rather than a tightly argued thesis on feeling, Hurley more explores its role and our culture’s perception of feeling.

My favorite section, “The theatrical brain,” shows how art, including the theatre, is a conduit for connection. A bridge between the self and the world, and through vicarious and direct experiences offered by art’s ‘imitations’, one “overcomes what [theatre phenomenologist Bert O. States] terms, ‘our ontological isolation from the things of the world’ (p. 22)… to connect with what and who is around us.” (p. 32, 35)

Art, and specifically the theatre, gives form and expression to interior life, and by coming into contact with this expression, one enters another life and living… with this and other points, Hurley sums that, “We attend the theatre to feel more, even if it doesn’t make us feel better; we go to have our emotional life acknowledged and patterned, managed into coherent storylines, and exposed in all its tumult (or its banality). We go to experience an expanded, more expressive, and nuanced range of feeling imaginatively and viscerally with the aid of another person or agency. We go, in the end, because feeling matters.” (p. 77)

I think this final note captures my thoughts on the value of and inescapable human need for art and stories. They orient and expand us, wherever they may be found, be they in galleries or cinemas, social media or books. And on this flip-side, this speaks to the necessity of art-making and the need for artists. The artist attempts to articulate what is difficult - or even impossible - to articulate, and it is this attempt or work that helps us connect to something or someone outside of ourselves and/or grant us deeper insight into ourselves and to the world and others.

[Abbie · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an excellent resource for theatre makers and those who want to understand theatre makers. It is very dense. I used it for a class on theatre and empathy (full of non-theatre major sophomores and juniors) and it was a little too insular for them to really get.

[Branson Cobb · Rating 3 out of 5]

Overall: ehh. It covers great topics and has some great ideas and honest intentions; but more honestly feels dry and as though it was written to simply demonstrate how smart the author thinks they are.

[Mélanie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fascinating and concise.

[Lucy · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’m a big fan of the Theatre & series. Theatre & Feeling isn’t my favourite, but is very insightful and informative. A good read if you are interested in feeling theatre.

[Chloe Weir · Rating 4 out of 5]

As other people have said, this is QUITE academic. It reads like a formal essay. However, I liked that. It got a little muddled in the middle. But overall I found this to be an interesting little read about theatre and feeling. I especially liked the bits about theatre "profit" vs. "pleasure". Very interesting.

[Erika · Rating 2 out of 5]

not great...

[tanita · Rating 3 out of 5]

solid range of ideas in a teeny tiny little book